On the Paradigm of Energy Production

In an era where the demand for energy is continuously on the rise, and traditional energy sources are undergoing significant transformations, it becomes crucial to explore innovative approaches that can meet the needs of a growing population while ensuring sustainability. Our partners from INEA provided insights into the changing dynamics of energy production and consumption, shedding light on the concept of energy flexibility and its potential to revolutionize the way we approach energy management.

At any given point, the technological marvel of the European Continental Synchronous Grid makes sure that whatever amount of energy its 400 million customers are consuming, it can provide. This is usually done by ramping up production with some reserve margin to make sure that even unexpected events won’t be noticed by any end-user at any time.

With fossil fuels phasing out, renewables being mostly unpredictable, and nuclear being time-consuming at best and controversial at worst, the paradigm of “we produce to match consumption” is already being challenged in some more remote places and will be challenged around the world in the coming years. “But”, the hypothetical user may say, “isn’t the world’s energy consumption growing every year? How will we keep up without producing more?”

Let’s look at a single make-believe unit of energy. A power plant can produce one of them every hour and your washing machine consumes one every hour. We have balance. Now, your neighbour turns on their washing machine and it consumes one unit of energy as well.

The power plant turns up the heat, sometimes literally, to now produce two units of energy per hour. When the fifth person turns on their washing machine, the power plant says “Hey, that’s the most I can give you”, and a sixth person doing their laundry will start to cause problems on the grid.

Instead of six people now washing their laundry at the same time with an insufficient amount of energy, one of them can offer to wash their laundry a little bit later, to allow the others to wash normally without straining the grid. Not only has this person not consumed a unit of energy, but from a balanced perspective, they are producing a unit of energy. Very simply put, this is energy flexibility.

In this context, the old paradigm of supply following demand starts to have an opposite but equal counterpart: demand following supply. Turning the system bottom-up and consuming when energy is available allows us to grow our energy needs sustainably without constantly racing against new production capacities. Instead of spending to produce one more unit of energy when the need for it arises, we can instead “produce” one by shifting other consumption – effectively for free. As we adopt this change, broader benefits for humanity’s energy future will follow on their own.